Dear Abby: Family won’t spend holiday with sex offender
The below is some rather ignorant advise from “Dear Abby”
DEAR ABBY: I have a nephew who is a Level III sex offender. My mom wants him at her house for the holidays, but none of the other family members plan to attend with their kids if he’s there.
Mom insists we should forgive him and can’t understand how people can’t forgive him for molesting children in his family. I don’t understand how my mom thinks it should be easy for us to forgive, but I feel bad for what she’s going through. She feels like her family is being torn apart. How can I help her understand that I see both sides of it? What should I do? — TORN APART
DEAR TORN: Go online and print out the definition of a Level III or Tier III sex offender so your mother can read it. These individuals are considered the most dangerous and most likely to reoffend. While at some point your relatives may be able to forgive your nephew for what he did, to ignore it could be dangerous for their children. Although you didn’t mention the conditions under which he is out of prison, he may no longer be allowed to be in the presence of minors, because if he’s caught, he might have to go back in.
Perhaps Abby should go online and print out recidivism research and read it!
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So Dear Abbey has a more nuanced view about this than she did 6-7 years ago.
Back then, she replied to someone simply that you’d be very unwise to allow your children near a registered sex offender under any circumstances, and you shouldn’t do it.
First of all someone should call out dear Abby on her fear mongering based on unsubstantiated facts. I think it would be wise of advocacy groups or individuals within those groups when they see these type of comments immediately send accurate and pertinent information to the people making these statements we have a number of articles on SOSEN about the recidivism rate. http://sosen.org/blog/2017/06/26/so-why-are-the-reconviction-rates-so-important-2.html http://sosen.org/blog/2017/06/23/simple-question-2.html and we have gone to some lengths to point out the second part of the equation and that is the fact that of the new sex crimes are being committed people with previous convictions and on the registry are again a percentage less than 1% and we point out who are involved in the new sex crimes. http://sosen.org/blog/2017/06/21/who-really-commits-new-sex-crimes-2.html we have other articles pertaining to other issues such as collateral damage to family member It would be wise if people printed these out and mailed them to dear Abby. They also could be cut and pasted and put in the e-mails and sent to her that way. A number of SOSEN members already do this
The next thing that should be pointed out is dear Abby considers herself to be some type of therapist she thereby has a fiduciary interest in keeping the fear running. We recognize the fact that most of our problems from the creation of the registry on forward have been based on false information supplied by therapists. You only have to look at Smith versus doe where false therapist information was used to provide a basis for the frighteningly high recidivism that allowed the court to justify saying that the registry was not punitive on the basis of community safety. SOSEN also has articles about the effectiveness of treatment and the amount of damage that it does to individuals who are forced to take the program. These are things that nobody wants to talk about but the only way were going to change these laws is to force the reality that the registry is not only ineffective but the amount of damage done to individuals on it as well as the collateral damage to family members is intolerable. And we do that by presenting the facts to the people that think the registry is okay. First of all we address the adversarial alliance that psychologist and treatment providers fall under because of their fiduciary interest in keeping the myth going “don’t mess with the golden goose” well we’ve set out to cook it using the truth. http://sosen.org/blog/2017/09/22/adversarial-allegiance-the-truth-2.html we also addressed the issue of protecting the dangerousness by use of a crystal ball or Tara cards and the amount of damage that is done the people who are forced into treatment programs. http://sosen.org/blog/2017/07/27/prediction-of-dangerousness-length-of-treatment-and-psychological-damage-2.html
All this information should be shared with anybody in the media that thinks all that sex offenders on are going to reoffend and attempts to perpetuate the myth we try to make a point of sending pertinent information to authors of articles and to their editors
It would seem there’s a new challenge and that is sending it to dear Abby
I wonder how Dear Abby would feel about a Level 5 offender (lowest level in the state) who isn’t allowed to go to any holiday family gatherings even if no children are present. My husband’s crime was viewing 16 photos of underage females online on a child pornography site that he accessed through a legal adult site. He was given 2 years probation. He can’t even speak to someone under 18 on the phone and I am not allowed to talk to him about what the grandkids are doing. If his daughter starts to speak about the kids, he has been instructed to hang up. These grandchildren are males in their teens. His evaluation put him at minimal risk of reoffending. His probation officer told him Happy Thanksgiving. Yeah, right. I’m sure he will tell him Merry Christmas too. He also lost his job the day of sentencing. And now his probation officer and therapist are complaining that 2 years is not enough to complete their “valuable programs. “
What manner of supervision is he on that he can’t speak on the phone about a child 18 years after a CP case that ended in 2 years of probation? That doesn’t make sense based on my experience. My conviction was also CP, also 18 years ago. My sanctions other than registry ended in 2006.
My husband is currently on probation. (6 months in of a 2 year period). My issue with this prohibition against even talking non directly about the grandsons to me or their parents is what purpose does it serve anyone who is involved? I asked the counselor if she could provide any clinical evidence that this helps rehabilitate him or keeps anyone safe and she said she knew of none. It’s just nonsensical restrictions that I’m sure you are all familiar with. I guess it’s just too much to ask anyone involved in this charade to provide any scientific evidence that any of it helps anyone except those getting paid to dish it out.
What value is scientific evidence when politicians with little effort can use paranoia to ‘prove their points’ and justify their ‘service’ to the community? Evidence of proof is slowly evaporating in this country.
They do the same crap to every sex offender on parole in Michigan, and parole is a 2-year ordeal. They do have a rule here where your parole agent can give you permission to be in the presence of a child with another responsible adult present, but I didn’t see them giving permission to anyone on parole that I knew. What it really does is make the children think that they have done something wrong.
@Bea, please don’t make the mistake of thinking that treatment programs have anything to do with rehabilitation. Rehabilitation was accomplished by conviction 90+% of the time, as shown by recidivism studies, and the very few sexual recidivists among registrants are certainly not helped or deterred by the court ordered programs.
The only purposes of treatment programs are to further burden the registrant and to facilitate blatant efforts to keep them running in and out of prison/jail throughout the entire parole/probation period.
Be aware that most court-ordered treatment providers are LPCs, not psychiatrists. Many consider themselves junior g-men and keep people in their programs out of sheer spite or on orders from the PO. But mostly they’re just milking their “patients” as long as they can. They either don’t know or don’t care about anything to substantiate anything they push in their programs and normally dismiss any challenge to their suppositions or conclusions.
Unfortunately Dustin, you are correct. While my counselor was sincere in his efforts, I was ‘rehabilitated’ long before I even started his sessions. All it took for me to be ‘rehabilitated’ was coming to accepting my wife’s death and recognizing the wonderful family I had been blessed with. While I had to endure sessions for a few years it was a chance for me to be educated on the situations that many face in this life. My faith and dedication of friends got me through. I was released from probation eleven years early by the court in Virginia, much to Florida’s disappointment.
Good points Dustin. What do you say to those that say the only reason ricidivism is so low is because of the harsh punishment received after conviction which includes intensive therapy and a spot on the registry, sometimes for life. These people believe that without that, the recidivism rate would be sky high. I don’t believe it, but don’t know how to counter their unsubstantiated way of thinking. I can say with all sincerity that the “counseling” my husband is receiving consists of continually filling out safety plans just in case a whole host of ridiculous scenarios might occur in his daily life. It all consists of “What ifs?”
Recidivism is low because the vast majority of sex offenders are good people who did something that they are horribly ashamed of. Drug dealers are not ashamed. They were just doing business. Thieves are not ashamed. They stole from people who could afford it. Armed robbers brag about how tough they are with a gun in their hand. Sex offenders lay low in prison, not wanting anyone to know what they did. Many sex offenders admit everything to the police when confronted, precisely because they are so ashamed of themselves. They realize that the few moments of sexual pleasure that they engaged in illegally just weren’t the many years of lost freedom it cost them. All we want now is to be left alone to live our lives. My last 3 years in prison were spent in a sex offender treatment unit. The sex offenders weren’t stealing from each other. They weren’t fighting with each other. They weren’t allowing themselves to be “hardened” by their prison time. They were damn good people.
Gerald, well said. You are right on. It was a high lite in my life when I was able to reestablish a relationship with my victim. We both get along fine and enjoy ourselves in frequent times together. Most sex offenders are not bad people, just folks who let emotions overcome them for a short period of time.
Thank you all for your helpful comments.
I wouldn’t even go that far. It shouldn’t matter what the legal definitions are for level II and III registrants. This family should be know better than the review board the specifics of the man’s offense and be more able to determine if he is “safe” or not.
I understand not wanting him to be alone with children that’s perfectly feasible and sensible for anyone (not just registrants). But simply being present with a score of others eliminates whatever dangers are supposedly posed. I defy anyone to find one sex crime against a child committed in the presence of others. Mere presence doesn’t make someone dangerous, no matter what his previous offenses were.
Since “Abby” doesn’t know the sex offender in question, she gave the only advice she could responsibly give: the safety of the children comes first. There is nothing that “Torn Apart” can do to change the attitudes of the other family members. I exclude myself from family get togethers now simply to avoid such conflicts. I don’t like it, but I’m the one who committed the crime. The root of most sex crimes is selfishness. I will not make others uncomfortable because of my mere presence. That would be selfish. That’s the advice I would give the young sex offender in question as well. Mom can schedule a smaller separate gathering with her grandson and anyone else who wishes to attend. Wouldn’t be fair to mom to make her choose between her relatives either. Sounds like she loves all her grandchildren, no matter what they have done in the past.
Gerald,
I personally find it repugnant that laws preclude contact with someone’s family members under any circumstances. Granted, there are exceptions (sex offenses and domestic violence, mostly), but whether or not a family members should be allowed contact and/or residence should be a FAMILY decision, not a government or societal one.
Agree that Dear Abby and Ann Landers don’t deserve much credence. But they do have a measure of influence with their readers. Accordingly, I think it wiser to flood them with verifiable statistical facts regarding registrant recidivism and the effects of the registry on families (as well as its overall uselessness) rather than just ignore them (Abby and Landers). Both have been known to recant previous (bad) advice given when they receive enough blowback. It certainly couldn’t hurt.
I have never given Dear Abby any credence.